Aloha Doha!

February 20, 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

I got to Doha this morning at 5:40 AM. It’s an hour behind Muscat. I had to wake up at 2:15 this morning. For some reason, when planning the trip, I thought that was a good idea. Hmm… The first picture is from the other night at the Chedi. I really enjoyed that dinner.

The flight went smoothly and I sat next to a guy from Algeria who teaches Arabic to people from an oil company based in the US. At least that’s what I thought he was saying, he was hard to understand. He kept trying to make me put my little TV (I was playing with the interactive Maps function they have on some new Airbus planes) to the Arabic language instead of English because “it’s easy”. Yeah.

I was able to buy a visa easily and there were no lines and I was happily welcomed into Qatar. I got to the hotel and the only room they had available was in a pretty bad place (right above some road construction) and they said you can just hang out there for now and then after more rooms open up we can put you in a higher floor room if you like. Yes Please. I slept for 3 hours and woke up much happier at 10:00 AM ready to start the day. By the time I got to the mall, it was lunch time so I had noodles at The Noodle House.

I got the Singapore Noodles and it was a little disappointing. I liked how spicy they were but it was a very small portion, and I did not like how there weren’t enough veggies and was still hungry after, so I got some dessert, a banana with fried coconut stuff on it. After that I worked at the mall for many hours and had a meeting. After the meeting, I made the mistake of heading back to my hotel in the middle of rush hour and sat in traffic for 45 minutes (basically to go 4 kilometers). I Could have easily walked it faster but my feet were hurting because I wore fancy shoes for the meeting. Won’t do that again.

Near the hotel, there is a complex with Syrian, Lebanese, and Italian restaurants. I ate at the Syrian one: Falafel, Fattouch (delicious salad – i’ve mentioned it before but it’s basically just Tomato, Cucumber, and Peppers salad with olive oil based dressing and some little Stacy’s chips on it 🙂 but even better than those if you can imagine such a thing), Seltzer, and Turkish coffee… the best meal, it made up for the lunch. I’m not sure what the difference between Syrian and Lebanese food is as I’ve gotten that exact same meal at many Lebanese restaurants on this trip.

The server gave me his mobile number “so I could make a reservation easily” Hmmm. In that picture above, which was taken outside the restaurants area, there is a guy polishing the floor. I couldn’t believe he was polishing the floor because it was already the shiniest floor I’d ever seen anyway. Looking forward to another full day of work tomorrow and also sleeping.